Friday, August 10, 2012

[Update] Fareed Zakaria apologizes for committing plagiarism, calling it "a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault." Time magazine suspends his column for a month and shortly thereafter CNN pulls the plug, at least temporarily, on his much-praised Sunday public affairs program. NPR

Multiple news organizations are reporting that the Time columnist and CNN host will apologize after being accused of lifting a paragraph in a column he wrote about gun control from a New Yorker piece written by Jill Lepore in April. A comparison of the two graphs after the jump.From Jill Lepore’s New Yorker piece:

As Adam Winkler, a constitutional-law scholar at U.C.L.A., demonstrates in a remarkably nuanced new book, "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America," firearms have been regulated in the United States from the start. Laws banning the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813, and other states soon followed: Indiana (1820), Tennessee and Virginia (1838), Alabama (1839), and Ohio (1859). Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas explained in 1893, the "mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man."

From the Fareed Zakaria’s Time column:

Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA, documents the actual history in Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. Guns were regulated in the U.S. from the earliest years of the Republic. Laws that banned the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813. Other states soon followed: Indiana in 1820, Tennessee and Virginia in 1838, Alabama in 1839 and Ohio in 1859. Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas (Texas!) explained in 1893, the "mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man."